In 1982, Detroit Diesel Allison (DDA) prepared a new engine design to enter the United States Army's Modern Technology Demonstrator Engine (MTDE) competition, which was expected to be developed into the powerplant for the United States Navy's JVX experimental tiltrotor aircraft program (which would eventually become the Bell Boeing V-22 Osprey).

It was selected over the Pratt & Whitney PW3000 and General Electric GE27 competing for the US Army's Modern Technology Demonstrator Engine program.

In 1988, the company signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Messerschmitt-Bölkow-Blohm (MBB) of West Germany and the China National Aero-Technology Import & Export Corporation (CATIC) to work on a version of the MPC 75 regional aircraft to be powered by a T406-derived propfan.

[13] In 1990, Allison studied a 9,000 shp (6,700 kW) propfan powerplant driving 8.5 ft diameter (2.6 m) contra-rotating propellers to power Euroflag's proposed military airlift aircraft.

The US Naval Air Systems Command intends to award Rolls-Royce two contracts to examine the effectiveness of proposed reliability improvements, the first is a software tweak to the engine management software for the compressor guide vanes that internal testing showed could improve surge margin by 0.8% at sea level and 3% at altitude.

In addition, Bell Boeing is developing an inlet barrier system to reduce the power loss from the engine ingesting dust and sand particles to supplement the engines existing centrifugal based particle separators as they can only do so much to improve the quality of air they receive.

At the same time as increasing power from 5,000 to 7,000 horsepower, the 1107C is a known element in tiltrotor aircraft with its two decades of prior use which lowers sustainment costs and de-risks the project.